Sam and Alessio's Marvellous Medicine : The Line of Best Fit speaks to WALLS

Cologne’s Kompakt Records has had an outstanding year this year. Found nestled alongside releases from The Field, GusGus and Rainbow Arabia is the latest, brilliant effort from London based duo WALLS. The follow up to 2010′s Walls, Sam Willis and Alessio Natalizia have pushed boundaries in unimaginable directions with Coracle, and caught up with The Line of Best Fit in their favourite Broadway Market coffee spot to tell us more about it.

“It’s always great to tour!” says a light-hearted, jovial Alessio of the duo’s imminent US tour with the legendary Battles. “And to tour with a great band in great venues in the US is a bit of a rocker’s dream come true! And we don’t have the stress about bringing people. Some are going to be interested, some not, but it’s really great venues which means great sound which is the most important thing… It’s great for us because, seeing as we’re a small band, it’s really good to have the opportunity to play with one of the best bands in the world… in that kind of world.”

“They have that rare combination of credibility and that success… and quality” adds Sam, sounding equally as excited by their upcoming dates and tour buddies. “We’ll be away for 3-4 weeks but when we come back, we’ll be doing some shows with The Field so we’ve got more touring, and more shows with Battles around Europe as well.”

“We’re a bit scared of them, though! Ian seems like a crazy guy!” says Alessio. “We did meet them, but we didn’t really talk with them too much. John Stanier’s great though, he’s lovely. He’s the reason why we’re touring with them, he’s a fan of WALLS. I think Ian’s a bit more private though. And I think it’s because I was such a big fan of his previous work when I was younger that… well, I’m not going to say anything unless he says something!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIgkLxh4pho

Based in London, WALLS is the collaborative product of Banjo or Freakout’s Alessio Natalizia and Allez-Allez’s Sam Willis. Both are seasoned music makers, but both have very different musical backgrounds. “For me, WALLS was my first experience of playing live” explains Sam. “I still remember doing our first show at Cargo and my vision going a bit blurry! I was going ‘I’m fine, I’m fine!… no I’m not, my legs!’. But I think as Alessio’s so experienced playing live…” (“Yeah, I have YEARS of experience!” Alessio interjects.) “…I think the difference is that whilst I’ve been learning about playing live, he’s been learning to play in clubs and so it’s been a very revealing experience for both of us, I think.”

“I have played a lot of shows in my life, but I’d never really played to a dance crowd.” adds Alessio. “Which is really different to what I’d call an ‘indie’ crowd, which can be pretty boring. It’s obviously where I’d put myself on a bigger scale – I’m one of those boring people at the back with a beer! But unless you’re a really big band that brings fans to the show, there’s never really a great response from the crowd. But in the ‘dance’ world, it’s really like – I give you something, you give me something back – which I’d never really experienced.”

“And there’s a hedonism that you don’t really get” reflects Sam. “I remember seeing Hot Chip and you’d see people going crazy, and there is that sense of hedonism…”

“But it has to be a big level,” expands Alessio, “whereas in the dance world you could be anyone, and if you make people dance, they’ll respond and I love that! It’s very animal and human, and emotional and that’s what we look for in music in a way. So it was quite revealing for me because was DJ-ing before, so he knew what to expect from that kind of world. I remember playing a Kompakt party at 3 in the morning and thinking ‘God, everyone’s still awake?! How are they still awake?!’ But it’s like a philosophy, almost – it’s great! At the same time, it’s quite difficult. It’s not just a case of bass in/bass out, you really have to feel the room. In a band, you can say ‘we do our thing, fuck off if you don’t care’. But I think if you’re making people dance, it’s a bit more.”

Since the release of 2010′s WALLS, the duo have garnered a reputation as an outstanding live force, which goes a long way in explaining why they were selected for the prestigious spot of main live support to Battles. An ability and a catalogue that can be adapted to fit many a scenario has been very important in building up this reputation, and something which went on to influence the duo’s most recent recordings. “Well I think we have an eclectic enough catalogue of material that we can adapt to fill a quieter set if we’re playing a bit earlier.” says Sam. “I remember playing at Panorama bar in Berlin, there was a Kompakt night there and we made it more dancey, introduced more stuff to make people move, it was great.”

“That was fun, and I think that was a bit like ‘Ah yeah, maybe we should do this on the recordings’” adds Alessio. “So definitely, I think the live show influenced where we went. But I think it sounds quite natural, which is what we wanted.”

“I think the difference is also that this is a proper album whereas the last one was something that came very instinctively and very loosely, a bit like George’s Marvellous Medicine!” reflects Sam. “A bit like… well, how did this come about? We could never really recreate that. So this was a more considered record, in that we wrote a lot more songs, we didn’t use them all, we structured it in a way that it had more of a narrative flow – we intended to have a real ebb and flow as a listening experience. For us as well, although we’re slightly sick of it because we’ve listened to it 6 million times as we were working on it, I do find myself listening to it… and I want to keep listening, I think it works. For me, because music’s come later in my life in terms of making it, it’s still an amazing experience having worked together with someone on something. It’s like having a baby, a musical baby! At least that’s my feeling. And then you see it with the artwork and the whole thing really comes together.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlQNfhWeZxc

“Another thing on our album that we understood afterwards,” explains Sam, “was the way that we instinctively write. With it being instrumental, with it having vocals but sort of used in a textural rather than a lyrical way, it means that people can really bring whatever they want to it. I like rediscovering the power of that, the fact that it’s open to interpretation. We’re both quite romantic in a general sense, in terms of how we approach life and music and so for us, the greatest honour is someone wanting to have a special moment with our music as an accompaniment.”

“It’s always surprising to realise that people actually listen to it!” adds Alessio. “Because we don’t know who listens to our music, so if just one person comes to a show and says ‘Guys, I’m here for you’, then we think ‘Done. We’ll play tonight!’”

Having already stated that the live process has had a strong influence over the feel and narrative of Coracle, and with both parties having the experience of working on different projects to draw upon, has a standard, effective writing formula been uncovered between the two? “It’s a very modern creative relationship” explains Sam. “We send files backwards and forwards, or have an idea or a sketch, and then we flesh it out from there.”

“Even though we live literally three minutes away from each other, it mostly starts individually. Then I’d send my thing to and he would take it to the next level. And then after a bit of back and forth, I’ll go to his studio and we’ll finish the song. Sometimes we actually start from nothing together in the studio… But I get pissed off when I read ‘Alessio does that and Sam does that’ because it’s pointless, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the whole thing, it’s not just the different parts that make it.”

With the duo considering this release to be their first fully formed album, how has the reaction been so far? “Perception wise, I think people are starting to realise… not to limit us.” says Sam.

“Also, compared to the first album, people are starting to realise that it’s not a side project” Alessio comments.

“That was a frustrating thing,” adds Sam “because you want people to judge it as its own thing and ‘side project’ seems a bit dismissive.”

“I think people see it as something that’s poppy but also dancey and also personal and could take you away on a journey, which is what we want” says Alessio. “When you play, you’d always love for people to call your band the name of the band and never refer to any other band or musician. But that’s really difficult, I guess! Most of the time, people use bands as a positive reference though.” explains Alessio, before Sam clarifys how far those comparisons are allowed to go; “As long as we don’t get compared to Daphne and Celeste!”

With the record having been launched out into the big, bad world and with touring well underway, now would be as good a point as any for a moment of reflection upon the current status of the WALLS journey. “Something that we both feel excited about is the feeling that our dues are paid now” ponders Sam, “and we can have fun and do some singles, some EPs, collaborate with other people because we’ve defined ourselves with this record. With the first record, we thought we did good but that we had so much more to give than that. And now, this is our definitive statement and we can allow people to enjoy it and in the meantime, right back to work! Something that people say to us is ‘wow, you guys are really prolific!’ and we think, ‘well, why wouldn’t we be?!’ We love to do it, and it’s the thrill of creation and enjoying making remixes.”

And with a shrug of the shoulders and a smile, Alessio sums up not only our interview, but the ethos of WALLS too: “It’s just what we do!” he says, as the duo finish their drinks and make their way off to the States for a tour that will surely bring this duo the attention and accolades that they very much deserve.

Coracle is available now through Kompakt.

Main photo by Robert Bellamy.